Movie review: Words, more than action, are what build up this Wall’

Friday

May 12, 2017 at 1:01 AM

Ed Symkus More Content Now

The long-gone structure between East and West Berlin is never mentioned, there’s nothing here about President Donald Trump’s fortification of our Southern border, and there’s nary a note of music from Pink Floyd. The title character -- yes, an inanimate object can be a character -- is a crumbling arrangement of loose stones. It’s a ruin, about 20 feet long and 6 feet high, the remains of what once might have been a building, now barely standing in the middle of a desert, next to an oil pipeline construction site that’s littered with bodies of workers, probably victims of an ambush.

It’s 2007, right near what was deemed the end of the Iraq war, and two American Army Rangers are camouflaged in the desert hills, watching and wondering if the massacre was done by a sniper. They’re Sergeant Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Sergeant Matthews (John Cena), sharpshooters who have been out there for a long time, rifles at the ready and staring through spotting scopes -- we get point of view shots to see exactly what they see -- beginning to suffer from heat, thirst, and interminable waiting.

Their waiting serves as a perfect introduction for a film that’s all about waiting. When Matthews can’t take it anymore, he goes down for a look-see, and a shot rings out. He’s gravely wounded. When Isaac goes down to help him, another shot rings out. He, too, is gravely wounded. Isaac makes it to the limited protection of that nearby patch of wall, while Matthews must roast in the sun.

So, the question of whether there’s a sniper around is answered pretty quickly, and now we’re watching things through HIS scope. But he’s unseen, and now these two guys, who remain in radio and shouting contact, must figure to how to survive their predicament.

Fans of war films should know that while this is indeed a war film, there’s very little action. It all takes place in one location; its characters are limited to Matthews and Isaac; and after a brief, somewhat chatty introductory scene, Matthews spends most of the film either unconscious or dead -- Isaac isn’t sure (and it’s not going to be given away here). So what looks at first to be a two-person film, soon turns into a story of one person. At least until Isaac nods off behind the wall, then wakes up to the sound of a voice in his radio earpiece, a voice asking for his exact location so a Medevac helicopter can be sent in for the rescue. But, hold on ... there’s something funky about that voice and what it’s saying. Is it, Isaac wonders, really the Army, or is it the sniper?

Since there’s very little to give away about the story and, up to this point it seems that a trapped, injured soldier on the radio with his rescuers might not be very enthralling movie fodder, it’s time to give something away: Yes, it’s the sniper, and so begins an offbeat, tension-filled conversation between adversaries, neither of whom can see the other, although it’s clear that one of them (the sniper) has the upper hand. The most striking thing about the script is that it stays away from politics, concentrating instead on what it is to be a person and to have inner demons, though for just a moment, the sniper (voiced by Laith Nakli), obviously an intelligent, well read man, does blurt out that Americans call his people terrorists, but it’s the Americans who are invading -- and being terrorists -- in his country.

The film’s tension, like the story’s wind and sandstorms, never lets up, even though very little happens onscreen. This certainly isn’t what viewers have come to expect from director Doug Liman, who has made the comedy “Swingers” and the big-budget films “The Bourne Identity” and “Edge of Tomorrow.” But the performance by Aaron Taylor-Johnson is exactly what fans of his sit back and wait for him to keep doing. Some of his most recent work includes playing the rapist-murderer Ray in “Nocturnal Animals,” the superhero Quicksilver in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and the naive soldier Vronsky in “Anna Karenina.” In “The Wall” he’s pretty much onscreen alone, and he not only holds viewer interest, he makes it impossible to look away from him.